Profiles
Following are the profiles of the lecturers and organisers of the program.
Jeff Bale is Associate Professor of Language and Literacies Education at the University of Toronto. His research applies political-economic, anti-racist, and critical perspectives to educational language policy and teacher education. He holds a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, hosted by the Universität Bremen, and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support his project on Language, Race, and Regulating Difference: The Heritage Languages Program in Ontario, 1977-1987. He is lead author of More Than “Just Good Teaching”: Centering Multilingualism and Countering Racism in Teacher Education (forthcoming, Multilingual Matters) and co-editor of Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation (Haymarket, 2012).
Kirsten Beta is a staff member at the International Office of the University of Bremen. Since 2020, she has been coordinating the DAAD project “Internationalisation of Teacher Training: Diversity and Inclusion in Teacher Education”, which organises the Summer School. In 2021 she was also a lecturer in the unit of Inclusive Education at the University of Bremen.
Jenny Bredull joined the faculty of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences as coordinator of international projects in 2019. She has been coordinating the project “Internalisation of Teacher Training: Diversity and Inclusion in Teacher Education” since 2020. She graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London with a Master’s degree in Media and Communication specialising in cultural studies, gender, and diversity.
Prof. Dr. Yasemin Karakaşoglu is the head of the research group on Intercultural Education at the University of Bremen. She holds a Master degree in Turcology, German Literature and Political Science and a PhD in Education. She served as vice president for International and Diversity of the UoB and is currently vice dean of the faculty and member of the Board of Governors of the German Academic Exchange Service. She was influential in developing and implementing the intercultural, inclusive and language sensitive university programme for teacher training. Current research interests are: transnationalism and teacher professionalization, Critical Diversity Studies in schools and universities, Islam and religious literacy in German schools. Read more.
Eva Kleinlein studied Primary School Teaching and Special Education / Inclusive Education at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Since 2019 she is engaged in research on inclusive education in an international perspective and from 2021 she is working as a university assistant at the Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Vienna. Furthermore, she is currently working on her PhD project about inclusive teaching practices of educators around the world. Therefore, she conducts asynchronous narrative interviews with teachers and collects additional contextual data with online questionnaires. Besides that, within her research, she focuses on inclusive diagnostics and comparative perspectives of inclusive teacher education.
Prof. Dr. Natascha Korff is a Professor of Inclusive Education with a focus on didactics at the University of Bremen. She researches and teaches inclusive subject didactics and teaching development with a special focus on differentiated instructions in mathematics. In the further focus of her work, professionalization for inclusive schools, she works on the question of how (new) roles and job profiles develop and how teacher training can contribute to reflective action in contradictory structures. International cooperation on inclusion and diversity in teacher education follows on from this research focus and takes up the development of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in inclusive education at the University of Bremen. Read more (in German).
Emilia Ndapandula Mbongo is a Lecturer (teacher educator) and researcher at the University of Namibia’s Department of Applied Educational Sciences. She is currently teaching Educational Research, Life Skills and Inclusive Education. Her primary research interests are in school guidance and counselling, HIV and AIDS, and inclusive education.
Dr. Michelle Proyer is a Tenure Track/ Assistant Professor for Inclusive Education at the Centre for Teacher Education/Department of Education, University of Vienna, Austria. Her research and teaching focus on inclusion, disability and forced migration, cultural and societal factors that affect the realization of inclusion on a global scale. Teaching in the area of teacher training is geared toward questions of inclusive pedagogy and instruction as well as innovative approaches to learning environments in the context of digitization and sustainability. She is coordinating and co-coordinating a number of international and national research projects. Among these is a certificate course aiming to re-qualify internationally trained teachers.
Clea Schmidt is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning (CTL) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She also holds an appointment (status-only) as Professor at the University of Toronto. Her teaching areas include language teaching foundations and methodology, leadership and teacher development in second language education, critical research methods, and adult and post-secondary education. Her research and scholarship addresses a range of equity issues in education including advocacy for LGBTQ educators in international teaching contexts; barriers to the inclusion of internationally educated teachers in Canadian school systems; educator and student-centred program evaluation; and policies and programs to support culturally and linguistically diverse learners and families. She serves as a Grievance Officer for the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) and co-chairs the Joint Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Her experiences and emerging research interest in the area of gender-based violence led to the establishment of the Preventing and Addressing Violence in Education (PAVE) working group.
Thomas Schrei has studied psychology and had training as special education and primary school teacher. He became a lecturer at the Private University College of Education in Vienna/Krems in 2006, with a focus on inclusive education in teaching and research. Since 2016, he is also responsible for programme management at the Center for Internationalisation. In an ongoing research project, he cooperates with the Levinsky College Israel on the area of competence acquisition of students in multi-level classes.
Limbo Enock Simasiku is a specialist in Education, (Curriculum Instruction and Assessment Studies). He is a lecturer (teacher-educator) and a researcher in the Department of Applied Educational Sciences (DAES), School of Education, Faculty of Education and Human Sciences, University of Namibia. He is the current head of (DAES) at the University of Namibia. His key attributes include communication, research, reflexivity and social flexibility. He aspires for equity through education.
Dr. Seyda Subasi Singh currently works at the Department of Education at the University of Vienna where she teaches and conducts research at the Inclusive Education Research Unit. Her teaching concentrates on diversity and educational equity with an intersectional focus on disability, migration background, sexual orientation, gender, and poverty. She is also a senior researcher of the Cov_enable Project (funded by Austrian Science Fund FWF) which aims to explore the impact of the current CoVID-19 pandemic on the lives of people with disabilities. She is engaged in several academic research projects at the national and international level.
Dr. Dita Vogel is a senior researcher at the University of Bremen in the Unit for Intercultural Education. She serves as representative for international affairs in the faculty of pedagogy and educational sciences and is part of the team of Lehramtsstudium International that conducts this summer school. Currently, her main research interests concern school language policies in Germany and communication with parents in schools of the migration society. In addition, she promotes results of a research and development project on Transnational Mobility in Schools stimulating transnationally inclusive school development and education policies (TRAMIS). Read more.
Cynthy Kaliinasho Haihambo Ya-Otto is a Senior-Lecturer, teacher-educator and researcher in the Department of Applied Educational Sciences, School of Education, University of Namibia. Her close to three decades in the education sector started with a diploma in teacher education. Over the years, she dedicated her research and teaching to the promotion of enabling teaching and learning environments through inclusive education from early childhood right through higher education.
